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The Contribution of Personality and Refugee Camp Experience to Callous and Unemotional Traits Among Immigrant Adolescents in the United States: Implications for the DSM-5 “Limited Prosocial Emotions” Specifier

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Abstract

Callous and Unemotional (C&U) traits characterize a group of adolescents who engage and persist in especially severe antisocial behaviors. These traits have been included in DSM-5 within a “Limited Prosocial Emotions” (LPE) specifier for Conduct Disorder. To investigate the generalizability of this specifier to non-Western cultures, we examined associations among Big Five personality, refugee camp experience, and C&U traits among 81 immigrant adolescents from non-Western cultures. Adolescents with refugee camp history endorsed higher levels of Uncaring than other adolescents. Personality traits explained 6 (Unemotional) to 18 % (Callousness) of the variance in C&U traits. The association between Neuroticism and Callousness held only for adolescents with a refugee camp history. Our results corroborate the importance of considering personality to understand C&U traits and the LPE specifier. Results also raise questions regarding the applicability of C&U traits to non-Western adolescents with varying pre-immigration experiences, and raise the possibility that the LPE specifier is vulnerable to false-positive identifications among such individuals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, PO Box 5010, Atlanta, GA, 30302-5010, USA

    Robert D. Latzman, Mariya V. Malikina, Lisa K. Hecht & Wing Yi Chan

  2. Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Scott O. Lilienfeld

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  1. Robert D. Latzman
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  2. Mariya V. Malikina
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  3. Lisa K. Hecht
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  4. Scott O. Lilienfeld
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  5. Wing Yi Chan
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Correspondence to Robert D. Latzman.

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Latzman, R.D., Malikina, M.V., Hecht, L.K. et al. The Contribution of Personality and Refugee Camp Experience to Callous and Unemotional Traits Among Immigrant Adolescents in the United States: Implications for the DSM-5 “Limited Prosocial Emotions” Specifier. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 47, 215–225 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-015-0558-7

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